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- Band:
Beheaded - Duration: 00:38:10
- Available from: 25/07/2025
- Label:
-
Agonia Records
Streaming not yet available
The return of the beheadeds, pioneers of the extreme Maltese scene, is of those capable of dyeing confirmation and novelty.
An album that, on the one hand, strengthens the language used by the Mediterranean band during the last career phase, coinciding with the entrances of Simone Brigo to the guitar (Blasphemer) and Davide Billia on drums (Antropofagus, Coffin Birth, Vomit the Soul) and with the publication of the lucky “Beast incarnate” (2017) and “Only Death Can Save You “(2019), and that on the other, by digging deeply in the sense of belonging and identity of the project, it runs on an unprecedented and cohesive narrative, an evident fruit of the desire to test themselves as artists and to move the sound system towards denser and atmospheric registers.
A change of perspective can already be understood by the choice of the artwork: a black and white photo that, in its simplicity, becomes an instant spokesperson for the concepts of solitude, death, faith and the years that proceed inexorable in a single direction, providing “Għadam” with a visual frame that is not so similar to that purely death metal of the past. Even the texts, sang rigorously in Maltese, are inserted in this general framework of detachment from clichés and reunification to the origins, also choosing to draw from the works of the horror writer Anton Grasso – compatriot of the nucleus formed by the bassist David Cachia and the frontman Frank Calleja – for the development of the concept.
Completed by the newly purchased Fabio Marasco (former guitarist of the Maze of Sothoth), the group therefore outlines the trajectory of a proposal that, in 2025, aims only at times on that long -term intensity associated with its moniker, lowering the Death Metal matter in a state of shady recollection from which melodies and constructs emerge which, as far as made mainly through electrical instrumentation, They seem to look at certain folk music of the Mediterranean.
The synthesis of this research and stratification work is a sound and humoral sound, as it is dynamic and attentive to not expire in rough and bombastic solutions, almost as if it were a warmer and more compared version of the last behemoth. A flow in which old and new school, on the edge of an organic production capable of fully returning the vigor of the individual performances, chase each other giving proof of great talent and marked vitality, with the guitars that – specifically – shine like blades in the dark both when it comes to advanced by riffs with a capital R, both when they are the arpeggios, suffused and punched, to drive certain passages.
Mostly, there is an atmosphere of waiting and contemplation, between solemn midtempo and uptempo never too tense; A series of deep breaths before a tragic end, with the triptych composed of the splendid “b'niket inħAbbru L-Mewt”, “IħIRE” and “Il-Kittieb” to sanction, complete with clean choirs, the ambition and expressive sensitivity of current beheadeds.
A renewed band, here struggles – surprisingly – with its most stimulating, mature and courageous work.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
